Guns, cars and racing — it’s fast-paced top-down violence that’s on offer in Death Rally, a new racer that just hit the App Store from Remedy Games. Take on multiple tracks and blast away at opponents in a game where cheating is encouraged. And if you need to wreak more destruction, Glu’s got you covered […]

Guns, cars and racing — it’s fast-paced top-down violence that’s on offer in Death Rally, a new racer that just hit the App Store from Remedy Games. Take on multiple tracks and blast away at opponents in a game where cheating is encouraged. And if you need to wreak more destruction, Glu’s got you covered with Contract Killer: the name pretty much says it all. But if violence isn’t your thing (as much), there’s Bird Zapper!, a fast-paced match-three puzzler.

Death Rally (iPhone, iPad) $4.99

Take to the mean streets in Death Rally, an iPad 2-optimized update of Remedy Games’ 1993 powerhouse original. You’ll get behind the wheel of a machine-gun-toting roadster in a series of races in which “no trick is too dirty” and leaving your opponents as smoking wrecks is expected behavior.

Each race earns you additional cash to upgrade your cars and weapons, and gathering parts from the tracks of races allows you to unlock new items like shotguns, gatling guns, and stronger and faster cars. You’ll also take on guest boss drivers from the world of gaming, including Duke Nukem, for additional cash. Remedy is also planning more tracks and a multiplayer mode that’ll be rolled out in free game updates for Death Rally.

Contract Killer (iPhone, iPad) Free

Glu’s latest free-to-play iOS title is Contract Killer, in which you play an assassin disavowed and pursued by the secret agency for which you previously worked. A rogue agent, you fall into doing the only work you know how: the kind that gets done with a rifle and a scope. Each job you do adds experience to your character and cash to your pocket, which you can use to buy new, better equipment to do more jobs.

Like other “freemium” games such as FarmVille or Mafia Wars, the jobs you can do are dictated by your “energy.” Each time you complete a contract, you lose a little energy, and when it’s empty, you’ll have to wait for it to refill, but when it does, you’ll get push notifications so you can get back to Contract Killer’s 17 story missions and unlimited side missions.

Bird Zapper! (iPhone, iPad) $0.99

In Bird Zapper!, you need to take out birds that are bogarting the local power lines by giving them a jolt of electricity. To remove them, you’ll need to line them up in match-three puzzle style — think Bejeweled, but with birds of various colors. Once you get the birds lined up adjacent to one another, trace your finger across them to send a jolt of current through at least three and vanquish them from the lines. The more birds you can take out at once, the higher score you’ll pull down.

Bird Zapper! packs simple, addictive puzzle gameplay. You get three play modes for your buck — Survival, in which you’ll try to clear out as many birds as possible without them filling too much of the screen; Blitz mode, in which you try to snag as many points as possible in a short amount of time, and Zen mode, in which you play at a relaxed pace.

Phil Hornshaw is a freelance writer, editor and author living in Los Angeles, dividing his time between playing video games, playing video games on his cell phone, and writing about playing video games. He’s also the co-author of So You Created a Wormhole: The Time Traveler’s Guide to Time Travel, which attempts to mix time travel pop culture with some semblance of science, as well as tips on the appropriate means of riding dinosaurs. Check out his Google+ profile.